“I am intrigued by what they are doing at Houston,” said Bevan Dufty, the city’s point person on homeless programs. “And I will look into it.”

What’s the road map for Houston? Well, it began with the federal government telling the city it was doing a terrible job. In 2011, the Department of Housing and Urban Development identified Houston as a “priority community,” meaning it was one of the 10 cities in the country most impacted by homelessness.

“The HUD designation wasn’t really a compliment,” says Marilyn Brown, president of the Coalition for the Homeless in the Houston area. “But it was definitely one of the best bad names we’ve ever been called.”

Making it a “priority community” meant that Houston qualified for technical support from HUD, and consultants like Mandy Chambers were sent there to create an overarching 10-year plan. Two years into the project, Chambers was added to Mayor Annise Parker’s staff.

“The idea was if we can get in there and move the needle (for one of the top 10 cities), that will move the needle nationally,” Chambers said. “But lots of mayors have wanted to attack homelessness. You have to agree to work to a common goal. You are going to have to change.”

The results have been undeniable. From a city that had the sixth-largest homeless population in the United States in 2011 — that was 8,538 individuals — Houston dropped out of the top 10. In all, the number of homeless people in Houston has dropped 46 percent.

However, before you call up the sound bite about how San Francisco government and social services are dysfunctional, there are some mitigating factors.

As Brown says, 2011 turned out to be a great time to make a sea change in how Houston handled its homeless. There was a bit of a dip in the economy that lowered housing costs, Parker was committed to the problem, and the city was ready for a collaborative effort.

Officials were able to get some of the people into empty apartments, which were available because of the boom-bust economy, and they also combined services into a single clearinghouse to streamline the process.

“It was kind of a perfect storm, in a good way,” Brown said. “ Because historically, the best anyone knew was how to manage homelessness, not end it.”

Sound familiar, San Francisco? Another piece of the Houston solution is that the groups really did work collaboratively. Here there seems to be more shouting and posturing.

Jennifer Friedenbach, head of the Coalition on Homelessness, denies that the relationship is adversarial.

“I think we do a huge amount of collaboration with the city,” she said.

What we can be learn from Houston is that putting people in housing units does have an effect. Even more dramatic than the total decline in homeless individuals is the decrease among those who were unsheltered, meaning they were on the street without access to a shelter — from 4,418 in 2011 to 1,950 now.

However, Houston has two big advantages — a soft housing market and loads of land.

“Housing costs and availability are night and day compared to here,” Dufty says.

“We had a rental market we could tap into,” Chambers said. “And we don’t have the land problem you do. We have lots and lots of space to spread out.”

That impacts the two cities in two ways. First, it is easier to create housing in Houston. Second, HUD issues what is called “fair market rent” to cover moving a formerly homeless person into housing.

“The fair market rent that HUD pays will largely match what the market demands in Houston,” Chambers said. “In San Francisco, I think there’s a lot of mismatch.”

Exactly, says Dufty. In fact, the city has asked HUD to increase its contribution by 30 percent.

However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t lessons from Houston that could be applied here.

“So many communities get confused by the idea that everything has to be a consensus,” Chambers said. “Change is painful, but transparency doesn’t mean that every decision has to come to the community (of service providers, funders and government agencies).”

And, Dufty says, Houston has some smart ideas, like “client track,” which lets service providers keep track of those in the system. Whenever they touch a part of the support system — stay in a shelter, eat a meal — they are tracked.

Overall, Houston is an interesting model, but not a plan for a cure for San Francisco. The issues are still high rents and housing costs and not enough room.